An exception was their position regarding Zahirism, the exoteric or literalist legal doctrine that through its adoption by the eleventh-century Cordoban scholar Ibn Hazm came to represent the most dangerous challenge to Andalusi Malikism. Zahirism is close to Shafi'ism and Hanbalism in its insistence on the predominant role played by Prophetic hadith, in its restriction of the use of analogical reasoning and in its denial of any validity to the consensus arising after the early generations of Muslims.